Not too long ago, in an effort to save a little money, LM and I put ourselves together into a "family" cell phone plan. Needless to say, I was a little surprised to find out that it's costing us more than two individual plans. (And stuck in a 2 year contract, too.) Sure, I could've added up all the little fees that I was expected to pay, but they were spread out all over the forms, nowhere close to being on the same page. (I did the account changes online on the horribly sluggish Verizon site, so my patience was already thin.)

It got me thinking about how my old $40 phone plan somehow cost me $55, and how cable and internet access prices (beyond introductory rates) are nowhere to be found most of the time. It's pretty much impossible to know how much telecommunications services cost, so it's impossible to comparison shop.

If we're supposed to have a free-market telecommunications system, we seriously need new telecom laws to dictate some pricing honesty.